Tag Archives: mini quilt

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Six for six! This little quilt completes season 12 of Project QUILTING. And true to form, I waited until the last 24 hours of the one-week challenge to get started. And as you know, the later I start, the smaller the quilt gets. ;-)

This week's challenge is Ab Intra, or "from within." At first glance, I think the theme is a little intimidating. But really, there are so many options. So far, there have been a variety of deep, personal, or lighthearted submissions.

It was hard for me to roll over the one year mark of being home during the pandemic this week. Beyond the general stress of the pandemic and the waiting for our turns in the vaccination line, there are numerous things that have been weighing on me recently. I told a friend I may just make a quilt of this emoji: ???? (the head exploding), because that’s it what’s inside a lot of the time these days. I consider this little improv quilt to be the fabric equivalent of that idea. I had no plan, just grabbing a couple solids to get started and moving between the sewing machine and the cutting table as I worked.

My quilt finished at 5" x 6 1/2". I used Aurifil 50 wt Desert Dawn Variegated (#4648) for my quilting and binding, chosen because it was leftover from another project and already had a bobbin wound. It was backed and bound with remnants. (One of the best parts of smaller quilts is the likelihood that I have remnant binding made that will work for the project.) I quilted with a zig zag meander, one of my favorites. This quilt marks Day 50 of my 100 Days of Free Motion Quilting. (I'm overdue on sharing on the blog, but I've been posting daily on Instagram @sarahgoerquilts.)

A shadowy pic to show off the texture:

Plenty big for my water cup and room for a snack!

Be sure to hop over to see the other entries this week!

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This week's Project QUILTING challenge is You're Crazy, inspired by the "crazy quilt" movement of the late 1800s. I honestly hesitated a bit about participating, because I've become more aware of ableist language and I've tried to edit the word crazy out of my everyday vocabulary. Ableism is defined as discrimination or social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. It includes the use of ableist words, many of which people don't realize have an impact on people with disabilities. If this isn't a concept you're familiar with, I encourage you to check out those two links above.

But in the context of this challenge the word "crazy" is being used as a historical reference to a widely known style of quilts from another time. I've chosen for my small piece to be inspired by crazy quilts by the style of piecing, use of a non-quilting cotton fabric (the denim I used to back it), omission of batting, and use of embroidery (which I used to hand quilt my little art quilt).

I chose a variety of embroidery stitches in five colors of Aurifloss. MMXXI = 2021 for the year.

My piece finished at approximately 6" x 6".

Old jeans for the backing.

I'm linking up with Project QUILTING. Hop over to see how others were inspired by the quilts of the 1800s.

P.S. My Show Me Something March linkup post will be coming out soon. But, FYI, this month it's Show Me Something with Squares! (I hope to see some creative uses of squares, but welcome

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This quilt was kind of three and a half years in the making, and also less than a day. This week's one-week Project QUILTING challenge is Fussy Cut! Like the last PQ challenge I challenged myself to a modern traditional design using a traditional block as a jumping off point. The most popular response to my instagram poll indicated Churn Dash as the favorite traditional block. That made me think of one of the first quilts I ever made.

I planned to start early in the week. (Don't I always?) And then I found myself without a stitch sewn on Friday night. I had a rough plan and had selected some fabric... 3 1/2 years ago. Way back in 2017 my friend Lorinda was hosting Color Play Friday. Each week she gave us a prompt and this fabric pull is from the week of Willy Wonka. I liked it so much I could never bring myself to put the fabrics back in my stash with their color companions, instead leaving this little pile together on the shelf this whole time. When I had a bit of a design plan, I opened the cabinet to find some fussy cuttable fabric. After picking out a couple potential options I didn't really love, my eye landed on this pile. Voila!

Fussy cutting is selecting a specific part of the fabric often used to isolate a particular motif, but it can be used to feature a particular section of a design based on color or directionality of the print. It can be a very effective design element. Sometimes fussy cutting means using the unicorn. Sometimes fussy cutting means avoiding the unicorn.

So after 4pm yesterday with less than 18 hours until the deadline I cut my first pieced of fabric and sewed my first stitches. After breaks for assisting my son with cooking dinner and having dinner with my family I resumed sewing. I finished up just before midnight and stayed up even later to photograph, blog, and linkup. There are already over 170 finished projects linked up for the week. Be sure to hop over and check them out! And mark your calendar to join us for the next Project QUILTING challenge starting on January 31.

The outer edges of both of these fabrics are the on grain. I chose this angle as a means to fussy cut to feature the flowers in the HSTs. You can see the HST unit after I trimmed it to size below in the bottom left.

Since these fabrics were from my Willy Wonka fabric pull, I chose to use the brown and gold as chocolate bars with a bit of golden ticket peeking out.

I opted for a pillowcase binding and minimal echo quilting in Aurifil 50wt. Chocolate (#2360) on the chocolate bars and Dark Violet (#2582) on the background. It finished at 16" x 16" -- I've Got a Golden Ticket!

Thanks for visiting! Check out all the other fussy cutting that went on this week on Kim's Project QUILTING linkup.

I'm also linking up with my linkup, Show Me Something. ;-)